Sunday, December 16, 2007

Don't let Dodd stand alone

By Libby

Thanks at least partly to the blogburst of indignation, Reid's rollout of the FISA 'fix' has been delayed until Monday. Jeralyn runs down Reid's lame excuses for virtually guaranteeing telecom immunity via procedural hanky panky. All his fine talk about respect for tradition would go down a lot easier, if he wasn't so selective about when he decides to follow it. If he truly honored it, he would respect Dodd's hold, just as he's allowed Republican Tom Coburn to kill legislation addressing unsolved murders of the civil rights era with his hold which he's been 'honoring' since last summer.

I'm going to be out most of the day doing family stuff so I'm going to send you to Digby for the talking points. Read the whole post, but here's the money graf.

Senators Clinton, Biden and Obama said they would support a filibuster. Edwards said he supported one too. If they would agree to come back to the Senate and help Dodd talk all night, it would bring much need attention to the issue and show the Democratic base that these candidates value them. Imagine if they all (including Edwards) agreed to suspend their campaigns and come back to Washington to stand with Dodd. It would be electrifying --- and it would show the country that the Democrats are prepared to fight. (It would also give them a bunch of free TV time.)

Will any of them (all of them?) do the right thing or will they blow it off?

Go to Dodd's site for a list of the committee members that can help. Click on the action button on the sidebar. But even more importantly we need to press the candidates to show some leadership on this. Contact Clinton, Obama, Biden and John Edwards and ask them if they are going to keep their word to fight for this by also suspending their campaigns and standing with Dodd in the chambers to protect our rights instead of allowing the administration and the telecoms to get away with breaking the law.

Or in the alternate, you can contact Harry Reid and tell him to just call the whole thing off until after the Christmas break. There's no reason to rush this thing through right now. The current 'fix' doesn't expire until February.